Whoop 4.0 Review

Whoop 4.0 Review : From basic step-tracking wristbands to versatile smartwatches capable of various tasks, wearable technology has progressed significantly. These devices have long tracked our body’s metrics, starting from the early Fitbit Flex models to the advanced biometric capabilities of today’s Apple Watches.

Whoop stands out by finding a middle ground between simplicity and comprehensive data analysis. It doesn’t aim to do everything but excels at providing valuable insights into your lifestyle. Instead of being overly noticeable, Whoop discreetly integrates into your daily routine like a personal coach, focusing on improving your sleep quality and aiding better decision-making.

Pros & Cons of Whoop 4.0 Review

Pros

• Easy to sleep with
• Lots of data in the app
• Compact design

Cons

• Battery life is low
• Subscriptions are expensive compared to competing systems
• Not exactly a fitness tracker
• Design
• Replaceable belts
• Limpet Battery

Some time ago, a reviewer complained about wearable devices being bulky and uncomfortable for sleep tracking. It’s like wearing a heavy watch to bed. Then came Whoop, entering the scene with a small sensor attached to a comfortable strap. It’s quite similar to the Oura ring in its approach.

The aim here is to make the tracker really small so that you wear it without even noticing, unlike a device that you have to check or fiddle with regularly. Whoop doesn’t have buttons and doesn’t need much direct interaction. It relies heavily on its battery to power the sensors and stay connected to your phone via Bluetooth.

The idea is to make sleep tracking easy and unobtrusive, allowing you to wear it without any discomfort or disruption while you’re trying to sleep. Whoop wants to be there without you having to think about it all the time.

This link between Whoop and your phone is crucial. When Whoop isn’t connected, it can still gather data, but you can’t access any of that information until it syncs up with your phone and sends the data to Whoop’s servers for analysis. Think of it like a passive bracelet, and it comes with different strap styles to match your mood or outfit for the day.

You’re not confined to wearing it on your wrist either. Whoop allows you to remove the strap and insert the sensor into compatible clothing, like sports bras, boxer briefs, swimwear, or various bands, giving you versatile options.

Adjusting the elastic strap is simple—just pull the loose end to tighten it. The clasp is cleverly designed for easy removal. While you might want to wear it constantly, it’s not ideal to walk around with a wet strap after a shower.

Whoop doesn’t have ports for charging. Instead, it charges wirelessly through a saucer-shaped battery that slides onto the top of the sensor unit. This battery uses USB-C for charging. However, the downside is that if you lose this specific battery or forget it while traveling, you won’t be able to charge your Whoop, and you’ll need to buy a replacement for around $49 / £44. Additionally, it’s not compatible with other wireless chargers, which could be a bit inconvenient if you’re without the designated battery.

What does it record?

• Optical Heart Rate Sensor
• Blood Oxygen
• Movement

Whoop 4.0 comes equipped with various sensors, mainly an optical heart rate monitor placed on the device’s back. This monitor sits against your skin to collect essential data, much like other fitness trackers or smartwatches. It tracks things such as your heart rate, heart rate variability, blood oxygen levels, and movement. These measurements help determine factors like how fast you’re breathing.

This data isn’t just for monitoring your exercises; Whoop 4.0 is smart enough to automatically detect and categorize activities. For instance, if you go for a run or take a stroll, it recognizes these activities without needing you to manually start or finish them on the app. However, the primary focus of Whoop is to track what’s happening with your heart and combine it with movement data.

While other devices might provide you with real-time workout data, Whoop focuses more on how your body responds during rest periods. It uses your heart’s data to figure out when you’re resting. By analyzing your heart rate variability, it determines the quality of your rest and how well your body has recovered from the everyday stresses you put it through. Essentially, Whoop’s main purpose is to help you understand and optimize your body’s recovery during rest.

Using the data from your sleep quality, Whoop helps you understand how ready your body is for physical activity the next day. If you’ve had a good night’s sleep, it suggests it’s a good time to exercise. But if you haven’t slept well, it advises against pushing yourself too hard and aiming for peak performance.

Apart from biometric data, Whoop also includes a customizable daily questionnaire. This questionnaire covers various aspects like your alcohol intake, diet, medications, travel, screen time, and even sexual activity. The idea is to consider these factors because they affect your body’s condition. For instance, it’s widely known that alcohol can disrupt sleep quality. Whoop uses this information to give you a clear picture of how these factors impact your rest and overall health.

How does Whoop communicate its findings?

The Whoop app is crucial for using the device, as it syncs your data to the cloud for analysis. In the app, you can see various results, such as your heart rate and stress levels (which occur when your heart rate increases without movement). Some data, like sleep analysis, might take time to process after you wake up.

If your phone isn’t nearby, like when it’s turned off while you’re asleep, it can cause longer delays in getting updates on the app. The app sends reminders for important information, like your morning sleep report, detected activities, weekly or monthly summaries, and suggestions such as encouraging you to go to bed earlier if you’re sleep deprived.

Whoop focuses on long-term trends rather than short-term details. It aims to help you understand your body’s patterns over time so you can adjust your lifestyle accordingly. It’s similar to the Garmin Body Battery in promoting the importance of recovery as a fundamental part of your daily life, not just something to consider when you’re not active.

The app provides comprehensive data breakdowns for your week, month, or longer periods. You can also share this data with coaches or healthcare professionals. Unlike many fitness trackers that emphasize activity, Whoop’s main focus is on sleep, recovery, and exercise, with recovery being a primary factor rather than just an afterthought.

What does Whoop live with?

As we’ve been using Whoop since late 2022, it’s important to note that it’s not a short-term device; it’s meant for a longer-term understanding of your body. Initially, it took a couple of weeks to get used to wearing it in bed, but some people might not find it bothersome at night, similar to sleeping with an Apple Watch.

Occasionally, there were moments when the strap felt tight while sleeping, causing the sensors to lose contact with the skin, resulting in some missed overnight data. However, this was rare—happening around three times in six months, mainly due to sleeping on the bracelet.

When it comes to tracking sleep, Whoop was reliable and didn’t mistake idle time on the couch as sleep, unlike some other platforms. Sometimes, it might report shorter sleep durations, particularly if you wake up in the middle of the night. If this happens, you can adjust the sleep settings to reanalyze the data. However, manually adding sleep data isn’t possible; wearing it during sleep is essential to get accurate recovery information.

Throughout the day, Whoop is hardly noticeable. It doesn’t replace a regular watch, so wearing Whoop on one arm and a watch on the other worked well for us. This way, even if you prefer a regular watch over a smartwatch, you can still collect all the metrics.

In our experience or Whoop 4.0 Review, Whoop has seamlessly integrated into daily life, providing continuous and evolving data without being intrusive. It’s helpful in recognizing when sleep is lacking or stress is high. Ultimately, Whoop serves as a tool to take a more structured approach to recovery by aligning how you feel with the data your body provides.

How Well Does Whoop Track Exercise?

As we’ve mentioned before, Whoop doesn’t function as a traditional fitness tracker like Garmin Forerunner, which shows real-time data on your wrist. There’s no display to check things like pace, so if that’s what you’re after, Whoop might not be suitable. However, it can share heart rate data with other devices, like cycling computers or treadmills, by activating Bluetooth transmission mode in the app.

For those who use Strava for exercise tracking, Whoop syncs with it. It shares detected intentional activities as part of your daily summary, revealing your workload’s impact on your recovery. It shows up on Strava as a workout, but it lacks GPS data since Whoop doesn’t support GPS tracking.

Whoop automatically detects and categorizes different activities based on movement and heart rate. It accurately identifies some exercises, but it often overestimates the duration, showing a few minutes before and after the actual activity as part of it. Sometimes, it even registers activities that didn’t happen due to inaccurate heart rate readings—usually when the strap isn’t snug enough, affecting sensor accuracy. Adjusting to wearing Whoop for longer periods helps, but loosening it at night might lead to exaggerated activity reports the next day.

For runners, Whoop isn’t very practical because it doesn’t provide data like speed or distance. However, for cyclists who use bike computers for most data, Whoop can be useful by transmitting heart rate information. Overall, Whoop encourages an active lifestyle rather than focusing on training for a specific sport. It emphasizes mixing exercises to strain your body and improve overall fitness.

Battery Life of Whoop 4.0?

In our Whoop 4.0 Review, the Whoop 4 battery typically lasts around 3 days, which is the device’s main downside. Recharging is done using a limpet-style battery that slides onto the device but only provides a few charges. This means you’ll find yourself recharging Whoop frequently, and it’s disappointing that it doesn’t support other charging methods like Qi. Plus, it’s challenging to accurately check the external battery’s charge level, which can lead to carrying a dead battery unknowingly.

Once connected, the device maintains good connectivity. However, when trying to pair with a new phone, it can sometimes struggle to connect. This issue led us to stick with our old sync phone rather than dealing with connection problems on a new device. The lack of clear information about connection failures makes it even more frustrating.

Occasionally, waking up to find the data out of sync can be bothersome. There’s no reliable way to force a sync, and although updating the app helps sometimes, there are instances where it simply refuses to sync until it’s ready.

Out of approximately 180 nights, we’ve only experienced one or two instances where no data was recorded, despite wearing Whoop. Usually, this happened because we loosened the strap while sleeping. Overall, these isolated incidents don’t reflect poorly on Whoop’s overall performance.

What else does Whoop do?

While we’ve been reviewing Whoop 4.0, we’ve noticed some new additions that enhance the experience. One of these is stress level tracking, which offers a different perspective on your daily activities. Whoop also includes coaching to help you understand the right amount of sleep you need. There’s an option to choose between just getting by or aiming for peak performance. You can set alarms that wake you up when you’ve had a restful night. Although sleep-detectable alarms aren’t unique to Whoop, it’s an added feature that enriches the experience for Whoop users.

Conclusion of our Whoop 4.0 Review

Whoop 4.0 is a fascinating device that’s great for people seeking detailed insights into sleep and recovery. The data it collects offers comparable or even higher levels of detail compared to popular options like Fitbit, Garmin, or Apple Watch. One standout feature is that it shows your heart rate specifically during sleep, not just zones.

The device’s physical compactness and comfort during sleep are significant advantages. However, it’s essential to note that it’s more geared towards tracking recovery rather than intense sports training. If you’re focused primarily on sports training, you might find other devices more suitable.

Whoop operates quietly in the background, acting as a lifestyle coach to guide you towards better rest and recovery. It doesn’t replace a smartwatch or fitness tracker but is an intriguing choice for those who prefer a less intrusive wearable device. Share your thoughts regarding Whoop 4.0 review in our comments section.